down the avenue

Honore's Slow Retreat

Carl Honore is hosting a slow retreat from October 11th to 18th 2009 in Italy at a renovated 17th-century farmhouse set in 20 acres of farm and woodland in the rolling hills of Umbria. The retreat is designed for people who are always in a hurry and yearn to slow down.

This is so much more than just a holiday in the land of la dolce vita. It’s a chance to explore and experience the ideas behind the book that defined the international Slow Movement with the author himself. A chance to reconnect with your inner tortoise, reset your metronome and reinvent your life.

Knowing Carl personally and having heard him speak on more than one occasion, he invokes and engages as he explores the benefits of deceleration and tracks how people everywhere are putting the Slow creed into practice.

Love this media kudo: ABC News christened him “the unofficial godfather of a growing cultural shift toward slowing down.”

Carl will lead a week of workshops, talks, debates and activities that will show you how slowing down can help you work, play and live better in the modern world. Click here to find out more and book for the retreat.

Ariane on the First 30 Days

Ariane de Bonvoisin's new book First 30 Days is for people who are going through a significant life change, whether its personal or professional.

They're having a special offer as part of your purchase of the book that includes a dozen free gifts from top experts in every area of life and the opportunity to win a month of free coaching with Ariane. Check it out.

Economic Slump: Time to Tap into Nature's Ancient Wisdom

Ever notice that when you stop writing for awhile, writer's block takes over and cripples you? I've known for awhile that I needed to take a couple months off from blogging and from the web in general, but not because I grew tired of writing or new stuff. Disconnect from the web and new media when its your bread-and-butter? You must be mad I can hear you say.

When I was in Africa late last year through early 2009, I had laptop in hand and blogged but not nearly as much as I expected. Nor was I connected as much as I expected I'd be.

I've lived in Africa three times, so its not as if I didn't know what to expect and yet somehow I figured I'd be so inspired since it had been awhile since my last visit, I wouldn't stop writing. Blog posts would be pouring out of me.

But no. Not even close. Notice the break in between my last South African blog post and the most recent ones. The closer I got to nature -- on a regular basis -- the more disconnected I felt from the blog. It was all about immersion.

Think about it: all of the best coaches in the world pitch immersion and language courses based on immersion or living in the country are the best way to go. That's what off-site business retreats are based on and one of the reasons why the Aspen Institute and Renaissance weekends are so insightful and inspiring.

We're human. We need immersion or as the Aussies put it: walkabout time. Frankly, most of us don't get enough of it. I read a Brad Feld tweet recently that updated us on his run in the mountains behind his house and that because of it, he was "completely and totally broken."

Of course he was. Bravo. Nature does that to people, particularly when you're really present with it. It's our roots - all of us regardless of what continent we were born on or connect to.

There was something about being so close to the African earth, particularly in the parts of the continent where humanity began, that begged me to listen to its silence. Over and over again. Listening to its silence calls for a dismissal of machines, at least it was the case for me. As much as I was inspired to write, I couldn't do so on a "machine." It would have disrupted the silence. And so, I took it all in, digested it and secretly hoped it was getting 'baked' into my DNA so I wouldn't ever lose the feeling.

I felt the same way in the Israeli desert, the Arizona desert and when I drove across country a few years back. I thought I'd blog about the whole trip and instead, took notes along the way and blogged after the fact.

The downside of the latter is that the posts ended up reading like a travel log rather than the richness you get from live-blogging. I'm a fan of the latter but when I'm that close to dirt, flowers and trees, its as if the force of Mother Nature herself pulls me away from anything that has a power cord or battery.

Isn't it a great time to reconnect with nature, in an era where you've either been laid off, your contracts are smaller than they've been in years or you have a full time job but most of your budgets have been slashed by ten?

When I was 21, I traveled around the world with my 32 year old British boyfriend, who was at the time a marketing rockstar in the London scene where we were living at the time. He took nearly two years off if I recall correctly, but not without thought. Would he be able to slot back in after being intimately plugged into every thread and conversation twenty four months later? After all, he was a 32, not 22. Unforgiveable? Perhaps, but certainly not traditional. We returned, he got a job and life carried on.

Years later, I did the same thing. I took off for a few years - Africa, Europe, you name it. I'll never forget an experience I had a month or so after my return.

I used to do PR for Computerworld so there were a ton of old copies of the magazine in my grandparents basement where we stored everything at the time. The industry stories hadn't changed all that much and while there were new versions, new companies and new solutions, I couldn't believe how easy it was to slot back into the industry without being connected with anyone for a few years. It took me three long days of reading to get back up to speed.

Today, the story may be a little different. With countless examples of Kurzweil's Singularity coming into play, everything is moving at a much faster pace and jumping out of the game and back in a couple of years later may be tougher. Perhaps true, perhaps not.

This much I know. Despite all the articles and blog posts I've read that traditional media and PR is dead, Jeff Jarvis' WWGD book tells me that the middle men are dead and that the economic recession means marketers will starve for quite awhile, there are always opportunities.

Remember Helen Keller's famous quote, something I remind myself of often: "When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we don't see the one opening before us." Newspapers have been doing this for years, Hollywood too.

Wherever there are threats, there are opportunities; it just may mean taking a step back (for awhile), taking less money (for awhile) and looking at the world a little differently (for awhile). Reinventing oneself or simply a role can be magical and rewarding.

If you're good at what you do and you listen and think strategically, there will be a need for your skills even if they get used in a way you never imagined. And trust me, if you're in marketing or communications, they will.

Ignite the universe, spend a little time with the trees and ask them for ancient wisdom. Ask them what your "real value" is. And then listen. In that silence, you may just learn something very powerful about yourself and about what is happening around us.

Remember that not just the industry is seeing a significant shift, but the world is undergoing a dramatic change as well and if you're not tapping into that energy source too, you're missing the mark (we just elected a black president baby and money is getting pumped into energy at home and countless other things.....)

While it may sound like a flighty "new age" solution to the changes we're undergoing, I'm not suggesting that asking the ancient skies and trees for guidance is all you do. I'm simply suggesting that you do it.

Breaking World Record at 91: Why Not?

When you think you're getting old, remember it's never too late to start something new. Check out this video of Grace Foster who first started running track the month before she entered this race at age 91 and just won and broke the world record for the sixty foot sprint for 90-94 year olds in her category.

Back to South Africa

I'm off to Africa. Whenever I leave the states on an extended trip, I always think about earlier trips in my life when a departure could have meant a permanent one. I followed the gypsydom of my youth more than most because I figured those "callings" were designed for youth.

They certainly weren't designed for my elders so I thought, since it seemed like so many walls, excuses, what ifs and responsibilities were attached to all the adults around me, wearing them down like 60 foot ship anchors. If my future was one of adults complaining they never lived out their dreams, using every reason why it didn't happen 'for them,' I figured I may as well 'create' a dream or two before the world conspired to take them away from me, which is how it seemed most adults felt at the time.

So leaving always brings about a nervous but intense and exciting energy. With this energy in place, you are much more open to raw opportunities rather than 'scheduled ones.' When you leave on a business trip for say, India, China or Germany, you have an idea of who you're going to meet with, the deals you'd like to cut and your return date.

Creative gurus, change agents and branding consultants can ignite new ideas and passions in people by getting them in a room with a whiteboard or you can simply tell them to go walkabout to a place that has always inspired them or they've had dreams of since childhood. Give them an outline so they have some kind of focus and send them off.

Be sure that something will unlock in their unconscious mind, something that will be life-changing for them and more likely than not, positive for the company as well. It's not a vacation, it's a walkabout and be sure to emphasize the difference. The latter will clear old energy and bring on the new, a bit like hiring a fresh new face and voice but with years of experience under their belt.

I'm a huge fan of walkabouts and while some do this in some shape or form in the way of a sabbatical, it's not a standard we've come to adopt in this country. Here we live to work rather than work to live. This cultural difference is fundamental and defines who we become, not just as individuals but as a nation.

My journey back to South Africa for the first time since white rule is a journey of re-discovery, it's a journey of expression through the written word as well as photographic and videographic art, and it's a journey into the past lives of people who both touched and shaped my world perspective now more than twenty years ago. While I spent most of my time in English schools in Durban and Johannesburg suburbs, below is a shot taken at an Afrikaans school I attended for awhile.

Back then, life's encounters were largely with teachers, parents, farmers and friends. On this trip, I'll be talking to technologists, green enthusiasts and creators, energy experts and animal experts, farmers, artists, designers, journalists, bloggers, photographers, CEOs, doctors and shop owners. More from the road. Be sure to follow along on this marvelous journey, not just my own, but the journey of 12 other bloggers who I'll join for a fifth of this adventure.

What Obama's Victory Really Means

Obama's victory last night was more than just a victory against Bush politics and everything that went wrong over the past eight years. And, it wasn't just about the declining economy that some Americans feel won't get resolved inside a McCain Administration. What Obama brings to the table is more than just the hope that every network and newspaper talks about. And, more than change.

Obama allows us for the first time in a very long time to feel again. He stirs up passion in all of us, even those who fear him, whether it's the color of his skin, or that they actually believe he's an Arab terrorist or the Anti-Christ.

It is passion, drive, the entrepreneurial spirit and the belief that anything is possible that made America what it was for our pioneering forefathers and is for us, today. Leaving a known world behind and trekking half way across the world to a new land was not for the fearful. The fearful never left. Those who made the decision had strength, endurance, passion, spirit and yes, faith. Their belief system was different than those they left behind; they created rather than merely lived the life they were given. They decided to create their future; not doing so would be internal death.

Creation. Passion. Living in a world driven by hope, faith, spirit and unity rather than fear, mistrust and greed - isn't that the way we are all fundamentally designed at our core? In a world untouched by external forces (i.e., The Gods Must be Crazy), and if not faced with the need to survive, isn't life so much more rewarding when we share, reach out, give something of ourselves to another person, another world?

But 2008 isn't 1776 and America is indeed a different place. Today, America's melting pot is much more than a chicken broth soup made up of northern Europeans. It's vast and diverse with one subculture on top of another. Many fear each other and in other pockets, people embrace each other, try to learn from one another, and move forward in their lives in a positive way as a result of each encounter.

In this vast diverse new world, we meet Asian faces with southern accents, black faces with hybrid German/American accents, elderly Mexicans and Chinese who don't speak a word of English and rely on their children for translation, first generation Indians who were heads of their class at Stanford and Yale, twenty year old Koreans running profitable companies -- all of it here in this big country we call America.

The American family is no longer "Leave it to Beaver" or "The Lucy Show," in black and white, nor is it the Katherine Hepburn looking mom with the floral apron she got from her mother which was passed down from her own. The average American mom doesn't have time to bake cookies several times a week and the Shake-and-Bake boxes from the 1970s that were a godsend for busy moms have transitioned into a lifestyle that has become all about efficiency.

That efficient lifestyle paved the way for higher productivity, with two parents working and innovation moving at a pace we might be proud of, yet now, some of us are starting to ask ourselves: what's the trade off? How do we keep up? Perhaps the Singularity really is upon us. Who can be sure? One thing is for sure. People around me are not just fed up with a declining economy or uncertain about what we're doing in Iraq, but they're overwhelmed with the lifestyle that the new America has created through our need to innovate and work ten hour days. All for the lifestyle of the American dream. As my international pals say: Americans live to work and we work to live.

Now it seems as if we are merely trying to keep up and make sense of it all.

For years, we tried to keep up with rising home prices, prices that even a higher than average wage cannot afford. We're trying to keep up with rising medical insurance costs. As a healthy young woman I pay more than $7K a year in premiums with a $1K deductible on top of that and 30% co-pay after that's done and they still try to get out of paying when they should. Do the math for a family of four or six.

We're trying to make sense of the fact that we've been making tremendous innovations in technology over the past two decades, and yet most people I know spend more time trying to fix an electronic device, a cell phone or a computer. People spend hours on the phone with tech support with no resolution at the end of it or simply more time in front of a computer trying to manage the information overload that clutters their inbox or the multiple social networking accounts that they keep getting invites to.

Are these the things that truly make our lives richer and more meaningful? Where's the physical human component? There seems to be less time for it because we're so busy merely trying to keep up and make sense of it all. What about the kind of energy and gratitude you feel when you hug a small child or help a friend home after having her wisdom teeth removed because she can barely walk?

It feels as if our over-developed world has lost its balance along its journey to perfection. Innovation comes at a price. Working 15 hour days to make more money to afford that child's college tuition because the costs are almost beyond each or to pay a mortgage you can barely afford, comes at a price.

The Republicans cling to this notion that somehow in a Democrat world, their American freedoms will be taken away, somewhere along the way, and government control will slow down their progress and successes. We as a nation will become socialist and taxes will go up.

During the transition between the old America and the new America, something happened. Along the way, many people stopped "feeling," the kind of feeling you get when you experience life changing moments or the rain on your face and it somehow marks you for life. Your life is different because of it.

Every time I travel, Europeans and others around the world tell me about this emptiness they see in America, and those conversations have happened nearly everywhere in the world. This void. This void has come from too many years of consumerism and government feeding off people's fears. We all know that the Republicans play on fear time and time again, so no surprise that they took the victory in the last election.

It's 2008, and we are so worn from the lies and unhealthy decisions time and time again, the fact that we can't keep up and make sense of it all, pushes us the other way. We NEED to hear the word hope again or what's the point of going on?

In the past few months, countless people have asked me: "where will you go if McCain/Palin win?" assuming no other option but to leave the country if the result was anything other than what it was Tuesday night.

In the shower this morning after finishing another one of Andre Brink's South African novels, I had a vision that threw Americans in different buckets. One bucket was the one we'll call the FEAR bucket. The second bucket is the HOPE bucket, the third bucket the MONEY bucket and the fourth we'll call the SECURITY bucket.

In the first bucket, I saw a bunch of Republicans running around. There were smart ones, those who have an affiliation to Israel and yet were fearful that somehow Obama would simply align with Iran and leave America and Israel unsafe rather than make an appropriately aggressive military move if needed. Other smart ones had different agendas: they weren't racist or pro-life but they made a lot of money and siding with Obama somehow meant they'd have to share some of their wealth.

They feared we'd somehow become what Russia was a hundred years ago. "This is America. How can you vote a socialist in?" they'd ask me. Or something worse. In the same bucket are the born again Christians, the Mormons and the southern Baptists. The gun lovers, the rednecks, the cowboys and the farmers who live in the wide open plains of Wyoming and Texas. All of them blinded by the fact that our ability to breathe freely and "feel" are diminishing in a world of cookie-cutter Bush clones and "sameness" businessmen who think strip malls, fast food chains and Walmarts are the only way to go. These are the icons we'll be remembered by because these are the icons that are starting to dominate, above our innovation, our passion and our hope.

In the HOPE bucket are where the creators have been forced to go because we really only have two parties to choose from. In this bucket are Americans who have been unfairly treated, they may be an underdog, a rebel, or of a different skin color.

There are those who may not be able to pay their bills anymore because of the way our economy has been managed for the past decade. There are serial entrepreneurs who can't live another day watching Bush politics. They can't live another day watching what is happening in Iraq and where our money is going.

They can't live another day traveling to other parts of the world and watching our respect as a nation decline. In this bucket are devout Democrats as well as people who refuse to have their decisions and their behavior driven by fear. Then there are those who are starving to feel again because its been so long and they want to remember the experience. They ache to be proud of America again.

In the MONEY bucket are those who may vote either way, but their lives are defined by DRIVE and SUCCESS, success defined largely in an external world, whether it be a title, the letters they can put next to their names, the amount of money they have in the bank, the amount of power and influence they can command over another and so on. Some people in this bucket have remembered how to feel but most have set feeling aside to make money or the next new patent or invention. It's a higher priority and therefore their primary driver.

In the SECURITY bucket are those who just want to be left alone. For the most part, they're non-participants. They don't really care about politics one way or another as long as it doesn't affect them. They want a simple life, to mainly be unseen rather than seen, and to simply have enough to care for themselves and their family. These people don't want to speak up or out and would rather the buzz behind the election itself simply go away completely. Obviously these are over simplified generalizations and people clearly live in more than one bucket, but in this election, these buckets felt more defined somehow and people gravitated to what they knew or they voted for hope.

Who knows what percentage of the country today are remnants of the pioneers of yesterday, our forefathers, the people who need to create and feel or suffer an internal death. They still exist, but a different America evolved along the way. A small percentage sits in the SECURITY and MONEY buckets and everyone else who is not in the HOPE bucket is driven by and live their lives in fear. Some hide behind those fears by shopping, others use violence, drugs, overeating and alcohol.

Another group hides behind puritanical or religious beliefs that may not even make sense to them, but they cling to those beliefs because they know no other way of being and these beliefs have become their identity and often the community's identity they have subscribed to along the way. Leaving those beliefs behind forces them to take a step above and beyond where they've ever lived, a place they never dared to touch. That place haunts them. It feels lonely, secluded, confusing, and isolated and requires too much of them.....so they think. And so they too have stopped feeling but many don't even realize it.

And now Obama. He represents hope, passion, energy, and for the first time in a long time, action. In a way, we feel as if we have voted for a leader that lets us return to the America our forefathers knew. A return to our primal selves. A client who was volunteering for Obama in Nevada said that they saw groups of people running as fast as they could at 6:30 pm on election night to make sure they made it to the polls in time. Others showed up who have never voted in their lifetime because they didn't feel it would make a difference or they never believed in any of the candidates.

The journey ahead. I'm looking forward to the return to our primal selves. It's the sort of thing I experience when I travel outside the country. I go on "walkabouts" when I feel suffocated by the workaholics, the over commercialism and me-ism that America has become so fixated on. Perhaps Obama can help us all return to our primal selves, the self that puts gratitude, respect, hard work, passion, giving and action at the core. Many of us hope so. It's time to believe again and remember that we live in a country where everything is possible. That, my friends, is the country Americans want back.

A Very Unsettling Election

The last few weeks have been more than a bit odd. I've never been so disturbed by an election in my life and many are saying the same. As for elections that have a life changing impact at the individual level, this one also falls into that category. The only other one that had a personal impact in my adult life was the transition from South African's De Klerk to Mandela in 1994. De Klerk was the last State President of apartheid-era South Africa. It resonated and became personal for me because I lived there.....more than once.

And then there was Thatcher. I couldn't get enough of analyzing Thatcher during my stint (s) in the UK, and yet, the US is home soil, home soil that often disappoints. With Palin in the picture, its more than disappointing - its a national embarrassment.

A Silicon Valley friend who is CEO of a Web 2.0 start-up often mocks me because of my outbound love, particularly for Europe which I have written about often. Somehow that love is deemed not nationalistic, non-American. Bullshit. If I didn't love this country or have an affinity for all things American, I wouldn't have returned, wouldn't be living in northern California nor would I care enough to speak up.

The last couple of months have moved beyond disappointing and embarrassing into....let's say disturbing. There's something that just doesn't sit right with all the candidates even though there's no doubt when faced with an Obama/Biden ballot over McCain/Palin, I could only stomach supporting the former.

I've been having strange dreams (somehow Palin shares an advisory board seat with me or two - arrrgh) in between the first debate and the last and understand that I'm not alone. A friend tells me of a dream she has about a fictitious friend's 18 year old daughter who suddenly becomes pregnant and because McCain doesn't make it through a very hectic four years given his age and the stress level (a significant fear of all non-McCain supporters), Palin is suddenly in charge.

In her dream, her friend's daughter is hung in front of a born-again Baptist congregation in the south, with Palin preaching to Americans "let this be a lesson to ya" with her well renowned wink of the eye. Supporters egg her on, clapping and shouting as if its some modern-day public lynching spectacle. Egads I'm thinking and I thought my dreams were over the top.

But frankly, I'm not surprised. Mediocrity has been creeping into this country for awhile and as it continues to settle, we stop noticing how far we've let it creep. Can not the loyal Republicans who love her Hockey Mom personality take a step back and ask a few fundamental questions? Is this woman qualified and smart enough to take on the most powerful position in the leading nation in the world? Can we trust her to handle a global war given her limited at best experience with foreign relations? Or how about just: Is she qualified?

I have sad economic dreams and ones that bring in the the rest of the free and unfree world, who have lost whatever respect they may have for the U.S. post Bush? What was McCain thinking?

Yet, you can "betcha" that Fox TV has come up with enough fanatical Republican spokespeople to tout her many accomplishments in Alaska, her solid background in energy, and the fact that Hockey Mom Palin is no different than America's Joe Sixpack despite her new addiction to $2,500 designer suits.

Since I've been told now by a half a dozen people that they have come across Americans who think Obama is the anti-christ (a 68 year old family friend living in Florida thinks so too btw), more than 50% of the American public believes that Obama is the Anti-Christ as well as an Arab terrorist in yet another dream. In this dreamed theatrical production, McCain doesn't step in anymore because frankly he's too tired and old to deal with international pressure and his declining reputation.

Forward wind....another dream. America is crippled with fear. People are running through the streets throwing gas bombs and holding up convenience stores. Those who can't understand how McCain and party got in with Obama's 10+ leads in countless states two weeks before election day, are either taking anti-depressants and seeing shrinks or they're on a rampage through the country wanting to terrorize even their own.

Sound a bit like Mad Max a decade before the movie trail begins? Sometimes it feels as if we're moving in that direction. I'm not a TV channel flipper and yet lately, I can't help myself. I move from channel to channel begging for intellectual opinion and piece-meal it comes.

Most of it is so infuriating and full of campaign-fluff, you find yourself shaking your head and saying "how did America come to this? how did we become so unaligned? so uninformed? so careless? so self-centered? so accepting of mediocity?" ..... and all of it in my lifetime, a lifetime that is only half over.

While Obama wants to make this country a better place, a more humane place, its not as if I don't have questions and concerns. I may not necessarily benefit as a small business owner under his new tax policies, and while he wants to make medical care available to all, I fear that I fall in that middle ground -- not poor and not rich, and as a result, may very well be left unrepresented.

It can't possibly be worse than it is now however and the alternative choice is more than frightening. As a healthy young woman, I pay nearly $6K a year and that excludes my hefty deductible and 30% co-pays throughout - before and after the deductible is met.

And then there's the fear, uncertainty and doubt campaign that the Republicans are so good at. Their mantra doesn't let up. Obama's connection to Pastor Wright still remains vague to many. Wright apparently suggested that "the entire war in Iraq and the larger 'war on terror' have been based on lies, half-truths, and distortions to serve the agenda of the United States imperialism." Yet, many pro-Americans have said that or at least thought it.

In an MSNBC article earlier this year, it was said that Wright stated, "we have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is brought right back in our own front yards.”

It's remarkable how many Europeans feel the same way - with heart of course. These are not Europeans who hate Americans; they're Europeans who watch American behavior and political decisions from afar and are much closer to the consequences (with the exception of 9/11) than we are.

And because of all of this uncertainty, people are asking questions, live in fear and have dreams and visions where none of the dots seem to connect. They are heightened by rewatching the debates, Saturday Night Live re-runs, state rallies, national network interviews and YouTube videos. I'm not caught in a fear bubble, but it is a bubble of disbelief.

Even if McCain and Palin don't get in, Palin isn't going to go away. Why would you want to when you've tasted a bit of what the Republican "fashion and hair" committee can buy you in just a few short months? And there's no question she's loving the publicity. You betcha she is.

McCain at 72 may in fact be relieved at the end of it all - he shows sign of more and more aging by the day. Poor McCain, a respected politician and a known Maverick who so often stood up when the chips were down, is now running around the country with a Hockey Mom whose uneloquent unedited responses have to make him cringe beneath that all American smile.

As experienced as he may be, he isn't the man for the job either, yet you can't help but feel sorry for him. (Joe, former POW who lost his toes in Vietnam and is now a taxi driver in Las Vegas doesn't think so either)

There's no question we've got a tough road ahead of us. Every day I get a new email from a friend or former colleague who is out of work and asks me for leads. I'll get an email or voice mail from a business contact who was about to close a round of funding and now they're shutting their doors. Others who may have closed their funding "just in time" are laying employees off and tightening their belts. People are talking about lower-income options and others are canceling white beach vacations at popular destination resorts, where the dollar is no longer in charge.

Economically we grasp for more air...and clarity. Politically we do too and its only going to get worse. The McCain/Palin camp is still trying to get Americans to think that Obama isn't a "safe choice." Obama's "way" is not secure they suggest, so anyone who hasn't lived outside this country and seen America from foreign soil will resort to what they know - more of George Bush-like cowboy politics.

We need to repair international relations, which appears to be a top priority for Obama. That said, there's a lot at risk right now, so we stand back, we watch and listen to the candidates in ways we haven't in years. Our hope dried up after eight long painful years of the Bush Administration. So now, we listen more carefully and we tap into more voices than what we learn through three networks and CNN.

We read blogs, blog ourselves and shoot photos and videos in small towns and urban areas. Anything and everything becomes recordable and publicly available within minutes. There's more noise and therefore more confusion. Yet we're a nation of choice and choice and quantity is what we want.

And so, we watch and we wonder with our fingers tightly crossed behind our backs and then, we vote from the bottom of our hearts for the first time in a long time. And even though November 4th is not yet upon us, many already have.

Earthquakes, Control and Community

I've only been here for a couple of years and tonight, 9 minutes ago to be exact, I had my first earthquake.  Not much, at 4.2.  Nothing fell or even rattled.  I heard it more than felt it.

Of course, earthquakes can cause an enormous amount of physical and personal damage, and if it had been a magnitude of 7.2 there wouldn't be opportunity for this kind of reflection.

But I'd been having an anxious day, worried about the pile of work and other things.   I found myself feeling much lighter after the earthquake passed.  The thrill of a small roller-coaster ride, perhaps.

I think it has more to do with control.  We want to make sure that nothing is going to go wrong in our lives.  But when we experience an earthquake, it's bigger than the collection of outcomes we vainly try to wrap our arms around.  So we have to let go.

I'm not often wow-ed by the Internet, but it was cool to go to the website link above and confirm the magnitude, time and epicenter in just a few minutes.  And to be able to write about it within 30.  I imagine others doing the same, or talking about it at a dinner, explaining it to their kids. 

I lived on the west side of Lower Manhattan on 9/11.  The memory of shared experience that I and so many felt in the weeks afterward is more powerful for me than the attacks themselves.  So I imagine neighbors here, strangers really, bonding together when the big one hits.   

On Being Fearless

I just finished Steve Chandler's book entitled Fearless. It's one of a handful of Chandler's books I've read in the last year.

Fearless seems to be on people's minds. Arianna Huffington wrote a book on Fearless, which I blogged about earlier this year. Diana Palmer and Jack Campbell also wrote books called Fearless, although their books don't fall into the self help and motivational categories.

Books that have Fearless in a broader title weave self-help messages throughout, such as Guy Finley's Essential Laws of Fearless Living: Find the Power to Never Feel Powerless Again.

One of Chandler's key mantras is that "Success is just a mindshift away." There's no question that fear is a key element that holds us back. I'd go so far to say is that it is nearly the only factor. There are some factors that are beyond our control, but those are not the ones that people spend their time feeling paralyzed over.

I've read numerous books that use fear as a way to demonstrate a point. The Secret does this too. I increasingly find people who have issues with the book. Shift your mind, shift your life. Frankly, I think people take this stuff too literally.

Having experienced the mindshift that Chandler talks about, I know this stuff works. When your mind shuts down and your heart takes over, you'll discover blissful magic if you allow yourself to stay there long enough.

Tony Robbins, Deepak Chopra and numerous others write about fear and the power of shifting your mind in a second from fear to love, fear to courage, fear to faith, fear to commitment.......in other words, values that oppose fears (or thoughts, because that's all they are), that sabotage your life.

Chandler's approach is extremely simple. Each chapter ranges from one to three pages and they offer valuable "lessons," the kind of lessons you'd hear at a Sunday school, yet none of his references or examples involve religion or even reference spirituality. They do however ask your mind to take a break.

Enter Eckhart Tolle, who continues to fascinate me. I've read all of his books except for New Earth which just arrived from Amazon this month.

Here he implores us to see and accept that this state, which is based on an erroneous identification with the egoic mind, is one of dangerous insanity. What I'm most looking forward to is his detailed descripton of how our current ego-based state of consciousness operates. When our minds are overactive and begin to spin, this my friends is where fear has a field day.

Tolle is complex. While I love his writing, it takes me time to get through his books. Chandler's style is much more informal. Think storyteller around a fire, where you'll leave with a lot of interesting reflections.

Through his short breezy chapters with great names (Death is like the rose, Books have always changed lives, Dance me through the panic, Before birth and after death, No fear like money fear, etc etc), you rediscover witty and important lessons that are so basic, you find yourself thinking - "but of course, this is hardly profound or new."

Yet we still let fear get in the way. He almost makes you feel silly for allowing fear to impact our lives. Once we can reduce a fearful thought to silly, we're on our way to leaving that fear permanently behind us. Quotes from greats like Lao Tzu, Henry James, Rumi, and Leonard Cohen also make their way into his lessons.

Time is never disappearing. He writes, "a lot of fear arises when we think about disappearing time. The sand running out of the hourglass. But while feeling that way, you miss something. You miss the secret truth (and therefore beauty) beneath this gathering storm of unfinished tasks: you have all the time in the world. You have nothing but time."

He continues, "time is what being alive is made of. If you'll slow down, you'll feel it." I love this by Ambrose Redmoon: "Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear."

My favorite chapter name has to be this one: Why am I living like a caged animal? Hmmmm, did he ever meet Howard Hughes? You don't have to think like Hughes to be living like a caged animal. He observes parents at a basketball game, who were furious with the referees or the coaches. It's the watchers that have the problems he says. The passive who go crazy with rage.

He asserts that "fearless means you're not just watching. Not just imagining. Not just picturing and attracting. You're actually doing things. You're in the game. Fearless means that you yourself are building the birdhouse."

Technology & Leisure Time

One of technology's many promises was that it would increase available leisure time.  It has, but it does not feel like it is so, because we choose to spend most of our extra time with technology itself.

Like all peoples, we've chosen our deities, and technology perches higher than time in our pantheon.  A jealous and totalitarian God, technology seduces us into its meeting houses, where we congregate to work and play in a strange, shared isolation, for hours and days and longer still.

We invent Gods in part because they console us in our fear of death.  When death is suddenly imminent, we make foxhole deals with a God we may have largely ignored most of our lives.  In the course of normal days, thoughts of death appear less dramatically, but still unsettle.

In olden days it was enough to be told by preachers and judges and fathers that justice and vengeance were the Lord's (and often theirs, by self-designated proxy).   They said there was a reason for everything, that the final accounting will be in Heaven, and if you do as we say, you will be rewarded in the next life.

But we are an inquisitive and acquisitive people, so this paternalism is not sufficient. 

We know that time is not our friend.  What does an extra two hours of leisure time a day or four more weeks of annual vacation mean when we are dust in 80 or 90 years?  But now we are told that immortality may be within reach in our lifetimes.

Fountains of Youth existed long before biotechnology, but our Elixir of Life comes from a source that has proven its power in wonderful and frightening ways.  God sent the Flood but we split the atom and we know that our technology can destroy us more completely than the Bible's God ever could.  Even a "natural" disaster like an airborne flu becomes a global epidemic only because of transportation technology.

But if technology taketh away, it also giveth.  Technology, with disease control, aging reversal and synthetic corporeal reality, can beat time.  We are in awe of this and we covet this and so we worship.

The idea that the surfing and work we do online in some way feeds the single maw of a hungry technology deity which returns the favor by granting us prostheses and gene therapy is perhaps a stretch.  If you believe in collective energy and unconscious purpose the stretch isn't quite so far.  And if you compare our activities with the spiritual give-and-take between pre-industrial mortals and their Gods, the deal-strike seems familiar.

So if you're wondering where all your time goes, why you spend so much time in front of the computer, you can think of it as being in church, with your leisure time as a sacrificial lamb.